For calibration of the phase shifter in a phase-shifting interferometer, an iterative algorithm was proposed to extract phase shift from a set of interference patterns. In each iteration cycle, the wavefront phase and phase shifts were calculated in two individual steps.Firsly, the phase shifts were assumed knowns and the calibration wavefront phase was retrieved from tri-variate equations. Then, the wavefront phase was assumed knowns and the phase shifts were extracted from bi-variate equations. Meanwhile, an error estimator to indicate the maximum calculation error of phase shifts was established based on the basic trigonometry and ergodic principles. The proposed algorithm was verified with computer simulations and experiments. The simulation results indicate that the proposed algorithm achieves higher accuracy, lightens the calculation burden, and the deviation between the error estimator and actual error is less than 15%. Validation experiments were carried out on a Fizeau interferometer. Two capacitive displacement sensors were employed in experiment to measure the actual phase increment. The results show that the extracted phase shifts are identical that from the proposed algorithm well and the maximum deviation is 0.7 nm. Moreover, the error estimator is 0.52 nm, which covers the deviation between calculation and measurement. It concludes that the proposed algorithm achieves higher accuracy and is more advantageous on that the calculation error can be given simultaneously, showing a convenient and reliable way to calibrate the phase shift for phase-shifting interferometers.